Watchdog alerts transport ministry over ‘intrusions’

The Union transport ministry on Sunday acquired an alert from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-IN) concerning “focused intrusion actions” directed in direction of the nation’s transport sector with “potential malicious intentions”, a senior official stated.

This comes after a slew of cyber safety assaults on Indian authorities’s domains over the previous few months. On February 25, HT reported about new phishing emails utilizing compromised authorities accounts to focus on teams of officers, trying to lure them into sharing their passwords on a web page that mirrored the federal government’s official mail server sign-on web site.

“The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways acquired an alert from CERT-In concerning focused intrusion actions directed in direction of Indian Transport sector with potential malicious intentions. The Ministry has suggested departments and organisations underneath transport sector to strengthen the safety posture of their infrastructure,” the transport ministry stated in a press release.

The ministry requested NIC, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), Indian Road Congress (IRC), Indian Academy of Highway Engineers (IAHE), state PWDs, testing companies and car producers to conduct the safety audit of the complete IT system by CERT-In licensed companies. “The audit report and the ATR might be repeatedly submitted to the federal government,” the federal government stated.

The earlier assault prompted the federal government’s IT departments to ship out an alert to giant teams of officers, in response to emails seen by HT. The incident leverage compromised @gov.in or @nic.in e-mail addresses issued by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which can be extra profitable in luring the targets into sharing delicate data.

On February 21, HT additionally reported that the gadgets of a number of former defence personnel might have been compromised in a phishing assault launched by comparable assaults carried out by authorities area e-mail addresses.

Earlier this month, American cyber intelligence firm Recorded Future additionally stated it uncovered a suspected China-linked cyber operation that was centered on India’s electrical energy grid and different essential infrastructure. While the corporate didn’t hyperlink a large energy outage in Mumbai to the operation (which it titled RedEcho), it didn’t rule out a hyperlink. According to Recorded Future, RedEcho deployed a malware often called ShadowPad, which has been beforehand linked to Chinese cyber troopers.

Last yr, NHAI reported a cyber assault on its e-mail server and stated immediate motion resulted in no knowledge loss. It shut down its server then as a precaution